do certain gears of a car have a set range of speed

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I’m mainly asking because i can’t wrap my head around the concept of stick shift.

ex: would 1st gear be good from “X” mph until “Y” mph and then you need to switch to 2nd gear?

In: Engineering

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes and no.

If you want to know when to switch gears , a better method is to give a look at the rpm’s .
Generally,as long as you are within the 1500-2100 rpm then the gear you are on is fine.

(For example you are on first gear as soon as the rpm reaches 2200rpm its time to switch for second gear -rpm drops to 1700 – hit the throttle when it reaches 2100 its time to upgrade to 3rd etc)

Now the mechanical reason behind this is(simple version) : each gear delivers a certain amount of torque the slower the car is the more torque it needs to accelerate: 1st gear delivers the most torque and 6th gear the least torque but higher speed.
But the trick is that the motor always has the same rpm , so we switch gears in order to keep the motor in its comfort rpm zone.

Took me a solid 10min to write this. English is not my native language, dont hesitate to pm me for further details .

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